Category: Work

Exhibitions • Organizing Work • Work

Magic 8 Ball

lisapradhan

“Magic 8 Ball” invites the viewer to reimagine trust in consensual physical touch in a soft, silly way. The piece is rather simple, the performer (in this case me) will sit in a chair holding a magic 8 ball and face the audience or viewer. In front of the performer is a bowl filled with a wide array of silly questions, such as “Can I tap your knuckle? Will you read me a poem? Can I tell you a secret?” Without knowing what’s in the bowl the viewer will pick a question at random, and if they decide they consent to the activity, they ask the performer. Then the performer shakes the 8 ball to decide the answer.

“Often one of the hardest intimacies for me is just being comfortable with the most seemingly random gestures and experiences of connection. After practicing somatic coaching and feeling more confident in identifying and naming my wants and desires, I began asking my friends for longer hugs. I found that often my friends, especially those who are also Asian womxn, longed for platonic, physical touch and intimacy just like me but were unsure of how and what to ask. I want to use ‘Magic 8 Ball’ to help folx imagine new possibilities for themselves in fun ways.”

Lisa Pradhan

TOUR

5/30 6 PM San Francisco, CA SF LGBT Center </3 Closing Reception
6/3 2 PM Oakland, CA Wolfman Books Signs Point to Yes
6/18 9 AM Detroit, MI The Alley Project Without a Doubt
6/18 7 PM Pittsburgh, PA Phosphor Project Space Magic 8 Ball: A Performance by Lisa Pradhan
6/19 8 PM Pittsburgh, PA Trampire State Building Decidedly So
Work

</3 Code

lisapradhan

Appendix Collective
</3 Code, 2018
Inkjet ink

</3 Code is a collaborative piece made using Quick Response (QR) Code arranged eponymously. QR codes are a type of two-dimensional barcode. </3 Code creates a collective archive of links of digital media addressing API heartbreak. Contributors chose to approach this as broadly as linking to profiles of artistic influences, their own art pieces, forgotten hxstories, poems about ancestral longing, and digital moments of levity. As contributor, Priti Sherchan said, “…being able to create and be heard as an API is itself a challenge…I did not try to pressure myself into – ‘Oh it just has to be related to my pain, it has to be related to my culture, but rather just the fact that I create is important here for me.’” If you have an iPhone with 11 OS installed, just open your camera app, point to a QR code, and scan away! (For all the rest of us, download a QR App from your nearest app store.)

Contributors: Diana Li, Vida Kuang, Marlene Iyemura, Lisa Pradhan, Karen Chin, Shelley Kuang, Jes Tom, Nicole Martin, Anum Awan, Lisa Sy, Sasha Vu, Jessica Nguyen, Priti Sherchan, Erina Alejo, Mariela Montero, Sandy Maldonado, Coco Spenser, Rosemary Gardner, Tina Kashiwagi, Anne Wong, Hanna Chen, and Ari Peck.

This piece was conceptualized by Lisa Pradhan, designed by Shelley Kuang, and assembled by Shelley Kuang, Lisa Pradhan, Karen Chin, and Erik Swedberg.

EXHIBITIONS

2018          </3 , SF LGBT Center, San Francisco, CA

Work

Hopes and Dreams II

lisapradhan

Hopes and Dreams II, 2018

Created many months after Hopes and Dreams I, Hopes and Dreams II, reinterprets </3 through the lens of retrospect. Hopes and Dreams II, is a diptych depicting Hopes and Dreams I – a decoupaged USB softly cloaked in dried flowers, small script, and a little bit of Copenhagen – from 3 angles (left), and a QR code linking to the glitched, digital innards of an unfinished artistic project with a former flame (right). By glitching the ephemeral remnants, this piece simultaneously removes identifiable markers, and subtly points to the way time disrupts memory.

EXHIBITIONS

2018          </3 , SF LGBT Center, San Francisco, CA

ITERATIONS

2018          Hopes and Dreams I

Readings • Work

Chhori: Mummy Yo Mhyah – Holding on for Dear Life

lisapradhan
This photo was taken at a performance of Chhori at Dear Mother at San Pablo Gallery in March 2018. Actors seen are Diana Li (left), and Erina Alejo (right).

Chhori: Mummy Yo Mhyah – Holding on for Dear Life, 2018

When my mother moved to America she brought two suitcases filled with shoes, clothes, sarees, and jewelry. Objects not included: How to Raise an American Daughter. Chhori: Mummy Yo Mhyah – Holding on for Dear Life is a process zine modeled after the language and conception typified in Yoko Ono’s conceptual art book Grapefruit. By replicating the Fluxus attitude and language of scores and instructions, Chhori, explores the magical realism of hyphen American mother-daughter relationships with humor. It asks — in the disorientation of diaspora, what do we pass down to our children? By stripping the complicated, transnational identity construction of diaspora to the lowest common denominator of most basic interactions, Chhori documents how the liminal world of gestures replicates larger contemporary Nepalese matrilineal of care and renegotiations of hegemonic cultural scripts.

This zine explores themes of Queerness, Sexuality, Arranged Marriage, Formation of Community, Destruction of Community, Abstinence, Dating, Womanhood, Hospitality, Respectability politics, Consumerism, Guilt and nonverbal communication. Additionally, this zine serves as a manual, documenting what’s already been lived through while describing the potential for time travel, space travel, and the exploration of the perhaps, leaving room for something wild to occur.

PERFORMANCES 

2018          Dear Mother, San Pablo Gallery, San Pablo, CA

EXHIBITIONS 

2018          Dear Mother, San Pablo Gallery, San Pablo, CA

Work

Hopes and Dreams I

lisapradhan1 Comment on Hopes and Dreams I

Hopes and Dreams I, 2018
USB drive, dried daisies, paper, ink, modge podge

This collage is a tongue and cheek homage to making peace with one’s “hopes and dreams”. On the surface, it’s sweet – a technological object softly cloaked in dried flowers, small script, and a little bit of Copenhagen. But beneath the surface, it hides disillusionment. The USB is from [redacted], the preserved Valentine’s Day flowers from [redacted]. The object itself, a discarded piece of technology is quick, fragile, and disposable just like human beings in capitalism and love in today’s society. Theoretically useful, but incomplete, serving no function. Yet, by shrouding these found objects in the careful art of decoupaged nature; peace is restored, and power is reclaimed.

The USB itself contains the digital remnants of a collaborative piece with a bygone cutie that was never finished as the relationship dissolved. Concurrent to the start of </3, Hopes and Dreams I, has been sent on a restorative creative sabbatical in Palm Springs to an environmental art museum that teaches children about the Four R’s – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Responsibility.

EXHIBITION

2018          April in Paris, S.C.R.A.P. Gallary, Indio, CA
2018           </3, SF LGBT Center, San Francisco, CA (in absentia) 

ITERATIONS

2018          Hopes and Dreams II

Work

“Ask a Nepali” /Ambassador

lisapradhan
Photo by Irwin Simpelo

“Ask a Nepali” /Ambassador, 2016

Describing Nepal often is reduced to confronting common tropes—the exotic unplaceable, the adventurous climber, the spiritual seeker, the hippie trail, the poverty porn—without room for nuance or alternative narratives which center Nepalese perspectives. Even academic texts understand Nepal through ethnographic terms that turn Nepalese people into learning opportunities, as opposed to humans with agency.

Hyphen-Americans face the experience of becoming ambassadors for the other as soon as they can utter words. With that comes the tremendous power to craft and construct “the other” however they choose fit. This performance piece calls attention to the novelty of the hyphen experience by inviting the audience into an intimate encounter with the performer. As “the Nepali”, the performer invites the guest for biscuits tea and conversation of the audience member’s choice.

 

PERFORMANCES 

2016          Appendix, Pacific Heritage Museum, San Francisco, CA

EXHIBITIONS 

2016          Appendix, Pacific Heritage Museum, San Francisco, CA